The fatal blow in the lingering demise of the missile defense scheme delivered by US President Barack Obama on Thursday may well have been struck in New York, in one of the aseptic negotiating rooms at the UN.
Discussions on a US-drafted resolution on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation had been under way for weeks when, out of the blue, Russia came up with objections to a text that is supposed to be the centerpiece of an extraordinary nuclear summit at the UN this Thursday to be chaired by Obama.
He is pushing for a bold collective statement that will help set the world on a trajectory to a future without nuclear weapons. Most UN Security Council resolutions end up being watered down. But the potential failure of next week’s summit represents a threat to Obama’s global agenda, much of which is focused sharply on the threat of proliferation.
The UN stalemate was yet another reminder that the agenda, outlined by Obama in Prague in April, was doomed without a more cooperative relationship with Russia. And the most immediate, emotive barrier was the plan — now scrapped by Obama — to deploy elements of the missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
To the Russians it was a symbol and the most irritating example of the US’ failure to take their concerns into account. Moscow did not believe assurances that the scheme was a shield against the potential threat of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles. The Russians saw it as an attempt to sap their deterrent against a US first strike.
Obama’s bold and risky foreign policy ambitions could easily unravel even without missile defense. But clinging to the scheme — based on untested technology against a distant and uncertain threat — meant that Russia would block US influence at every turn.
A week after the Security Council meeting, the permanent five members, together with Germany, are due to sit down with an Iranian delegation for a critical meeting on Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran says it will turn up but not negotiate on that program, which it insists is peaceful and its sovereign right.
The US, Britain and France want to threaten oil and gas sanctions if Tehran does not suspend the enrichment of uranium, but those threats carry less weight without Russian support. Moscow’s acquiescence would also bring on board China, whose guiding principle is never to be isolated on the council.
If anything could knock the hardline clerical regime in Tehran off course, it is the prospect of a united Security Council brandishing meaningful sanctions.
Two months later, on Dec. 5, the 18-year-old Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is due to expire. US and Russian negotiators are racing to strike an arms control deal that will take its place, cutting deployed strategic warheads on each side to a lower limit of 1,500 each.
The talks were supposed to exclude missile defense, but a diplomat monitoring the negotiations said the Russians kept bringing the issue up.
“It was a major impediment. Agreement was being hindered,” the diplomat said.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, believes the wheels will start turning more rapidly.
“We can expect the START talks to be completed by the December deadline and the bilateral atmosphere will surely improve,” he said.
A gap between the death of the old treaty and the birth of the new could be filled by some diplomatic improvisation. Far more important is what happens the day after the new agreement — “START plus”, as it is provisionally known — comes into force. Will it be seen as the end of a process or the start of a new round aimed at deeper cuts — and a new era in arms control?
Daryl Kimball, head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said on Thursday: “The deferral of the [missile defense] system and pursuit of other options will open the way for deeper US-Russian strategic arms reductions — below the 1,500 warheads — and perhaps increase Russia’s willingness to join the US in coming down harder on Iran.”
If the momentum can be maintained, Obama has a fighting chance of finding support in the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China would then almost certainly follow suit, and the treaty would enter into force, prohibiting nuclear tests and providing a powerful legal barrier to proliferation.
In such circumstances, there is hope for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to be reviewed in May. The NPT, as Obama put it in his Prague speech, is a “bargain” between the nuclear weapons states and the non-weapons states.
“Countries with nuclear weapons will move towards disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them, and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy,” he said.
For four decades, the NPT has slowed the spread of nuclear weapons. There are now nine states with nuclear weapons rather than the original five, but the world has not seen the disastrous cascade of proliferation once predicted.
But the bargain is now wearing thin.
A failure to maintain momentum behind disarmament, combined with continued Iranian progress on its nuclear program and an unsuccessful NPT conference next May, would create the conditions for conflict between Israel and Iran and the spread of nuclear weapons across the Middle East. It is a nightmare scenario and the inverse of the hopeful future Obama invoked in Prague.
A solid US-Russian relationship is the key. Much will depend on the response from Moscow. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to NATO, gave some room for hope, albeit in macabre terms.
“It’s like having a decomposing corpse in your flat — and then the mortician comes and takes it away,” Rogozin said. “This means we’re getting rid of one of those niggling problems which prevented us from doing the real work.”
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